August Comte1798 –1857

Positivism: the methods of the natural sciences could be productively used to study the social world

optimistic belief in humans' ability to figure things out and improve their circumstances

Positivism

• No king, priest, or philosopher could simply declare what social arrangements were best; those should be determined by means of empirical study and systematic analysis.

• Society was progressing in a manner that wasn't random. Social change, for better and for worse, made some kind of sense, and it had some kind of order or meaning to it.

• Although some amount of inequality might be unavoidable, inequality on the basis of social class, place of birth, or parentage was not only immoral but also inefficient.

Karl Marx1818 – 1883

his general theory of history

ideas about power and exploitation

Marx on history

dialectical materialism

most important forces in history were basically economic forces

every stage in history distinguished by its own mode of production, a way of organizing the production and distribution of material goods

each mode of production has inherent conflicts among different classes

conflicts inevitably lead to the failure of one mode of production and the beginning of another

historical change about class conflict over concrete things

Marx on capitalism bourgeois: the wealthy, powerful

people who own the factories, the farmland, and just about everything else

proletariat: the people who don't own

much and are forced to work for the bourgeois to feed their families

no matter how much profit a factory owner makes in a day, if his workers don't have anywhere else to work, all the owner needs to do is pay the workers enough to keep them alive

a system that trades real things (work, food, shelter) for an imaginary thing: money

value of my labor isn't measured by what good I do for myself or my society; it's measured by how much (or how little) money I make

Émile Durkheim1858-1917

humans are fundamentally social

Durkheim’s View of Society

humans are fundamentally social

The Rules of Sociological Method (1895)

social facts: facts that are true of groups of people rather than individuals

humans becoming more differentiated

shared social values help us work together productively & peacefully

Sociology to die for

Suicide (1897)

suicides seem to have shared social causes

suicide rate is a social fact that ought to be explained by other social facts

pioneering use of social statistics

egoistic suicides were more frequent in groups with weak social ties

altruistic suicides were more frequent in groups with extremely strong social ties

defining and explaining social facts about groups

Max Weber1864 – 1920

social life is marked by both conflict and cohesion

“Iron Cage"

developing technology and growing population had inevitably led to functional differentiation

modern society is marked by rationalization

modern society as an “iron cage," where for better and for worse we're locked into well-defined roles

development of a set of religious values that promoted hard work and savings had worked

Protestant work ethic

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05)

values of hard work, discipline, and savings

connection between a rigorous religious worldview and the capitalist economic system

may be dehumanizing to work in exchange for money rather than to work growing food for your family, but now you have money that you can spend on whatever you want